Love

"True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together," Ricardo Montalban.

Catelyn Stark of House Tully loved Eddard Stark.

She loved her Lord husband, in the nearing two decades since they had wed.

It had not been a love so easily given, she is the first to admit to herself. It was not the marriage, nor the wedding she had dreamed of, as a child. When she had been a girl she had spent days dreaming of it. Days of thinking of her dress, her maiden's cloak, between lessons and paperwork and manning her brother Edmund and sister Lisa, and little Petyr. Little Catelyn Tully, young and dreaming, had imagined a large celebration, frivolity, and beauty, with all of the Riverlands in attendance in the Riverland Sept. She had imagined herself the beauty of the Seven Kingdoms, the envy of all, with a fair husband to match. Wistful, far-off dreams of a wedding much grander than she knew were feasible.

Since she had been but a girl, she had been promised to Brandon Stark, the heir to Winterfell, future Lord of the North. She had had her wonderful match, her own promise of being the Lady to the Warden of the North.

He had been handsome, all those years ago, when she had first met him. Tall, loud, brash, and fierce. Wild in a thrilling way to her, she who was so innocently unused to men like him. With his loud voice, his wiggling brows, the proud set of his shoulders as he went about Riverrun. She had been so ready, so accepting of the spouse chosen for her, that tall, proud man, with his broad-chested, muscled arms, with the piercing grey eyes and the ready smile about his bearded mouth.

When Petyr had challenged him, watching the bout for her honor, for her hand had been thrilling. Flattering and showcasing the prowess of who they called the Wild Wolf- When Brandon had won so simply and spared the dear boy who was her friend, she had felt her attraction fall to love as easily as anything. Mercy was such a hard thing to give and Brandon Stark as wild, uncouth as he could be, had granted it so readily with a word from her as if she was the tempering hand. His conscious. She could see her life with him, so easily, so readily, he the Proud Lord, she the sweet Lady at his side, his mercy, his love. Dreams of grey-eyed babes, of sweetly-face children from him, had made her so ridiculously happy. She had spent moons dreaming of the man, the fierce man, hands stitching elegant handkerchiefs of favor for him, silver fishes dancing with grey wolves. She had spent just as much time on her Maiden's Cloak and wedding dress, careful of each and every detail for her magical day.

Then news of his death had come and his younger brother, Eddard, 'Ned' as he was known, had come to be her husband instead.

Her wedding had been swift, with only the household and the men that Lord Aryn had brought with them in attendance. It wasn't her day, it hadn't been a grand feast, something cobbled together, barely four courses, their anticipation of what was to come making practicality call for the readying of their stores in the war to come. Lysa had been next to her, married in the same ceremony. A thrown-together affair that had not been about Cat nor her husband, but the calls of war to come.

He was not as tall, not as handsome, Ned Stark.

That had been her first impression of a boy she barely remembered she had met before, for her focus had been Brandon, not what should have been her good-brother.

He was shorter, quieter. Drabber. Not rash. Not fierce or so well comported as Brandon. Oh, he was perhaps more polite, but he did not have his elder brother's charisma, his magnetism. Nor Cat's easy love, only her empathy at his loss and the reassurance of what little she had heard of his temperament. And she could not see this person battle for her hand so readily as Brandon had done. But duty and family compelled her, so she had married that quiet boy with uneasy and certainty of the war to come. His companion, Robert Baratheon had been rallying for war, and the Lord of the Vale, Jon Aryn was ready to rage against the crown for the sake of his two fosterlings.

She knew what she was then, more so than when her father had mentioned the growing ties to the North through her marriage to Brandon. A political marriage, a political hold for the North and the East, an assurance of arms. The Riverlands would throw their lot in with the Rebels. Family, Duty, Honor.

But he had been gentle when all her Septa had told her would only be pain and endurance. He had not been savage, unpracticed as he was, but he had waited and whispered for forgiveness when she had cried out. Soothed away her hair, calloused hands trembling against her brow. He had hardly said a word beyond asking for forgiveness, had hardly made a sound but soft pants of need. But all of his touches had been gentle and in that first coupling part of Cat's heart had gone to that quiet boy as she had looked into his dark grey eyes.

And he had left Riverrun to fight a war, his seed inside her, and part of her wondered if he would never come back.

Robb had been beauty in flesh for her. So small limbs, blue eyes so much like her, blond hair quickly falling to vivid red. A gift from her husband, "An heir to Winterfell," her father had said, and more of her heart had gone to Ned Stark, so far away from her. For if they could make such a thing as Robb, together… Perhaps they were not so politically forced together after all. Perhaps she could love the man who was fighting so gallantly to avenge his kin, to find his sister.

Then the war had been won.

A dynasty dead, a babe, and assurance of her legacy in her hands...

And Ned had another woman's babe in his arms, so lovingly, when he had never held his own trueborn heir.

Rage, betrayal had stung and Cat had resigned herself to a loveless marriage, at the humiliation of a bastard in her own home. A living sin. Her strange new home, wild and cold, people indifferent and disliking of her, a Southern woman, a strange unpracticed and too different of their ways. She tried, she threw herself into duty and in defense of her own honor, in making both noble and smallfolk alike understand she was no usurper or dismissive of their traditions. Ned built her a Sept, on coming to Winterfell, despite how much the rest of the North did not want it. She was the pagan, the outsider with her strange Seven and weird worship. But he built it anyway, insistent at giving her her place as the Lady of Winterfell. He remarried her before the heart tree, to cement their marriage in the eyes of the North. A gesture of good faith, of acceptance of her difference when everyone was so ready to rally against them.

Time passed.

Sansa was born and the expression on Ned's face had made more of heart go to him, as he had made the bells of Winterfell and Town ring out in a joyous triumph of the life they had made together. It took more children, Bran, Arya for her to understand how insanely in love she had fallen with Eddard when, he, for a second time, ran off to fight King Robert's War. He was not Brandon, nor his substitute He was… More. Brandon had been the first sweet love so easily given. Eddard was true love hard-won and long made by years together, by the blood shared of their children coming into being. Built stone by stone through years of joys and sorrows.

And it is her love for her husband and his children that made her so frightened of what has happened to Sansa.

"Sansa," asked Cat, softly, "Were you in love with the High King?"

Sansa starts. Red hair in her simple braid jumps, as Sansa's head raises. Her eyes lock on Cat, blue and bright as any jewel. They do not gleam, they do not sparkle. Her face is completely still, perfectly composed save for her arched brows raising just slightly. She looks at Cat from above her final designs for more glass gardens strewn across the desk she now had in Ned's solar. It was too cramped to work on a single desk together, so two had been added.

"The worse was the fact that the Winter stores were practically non-existence… The War of Five Kings wrecked the realm, tore it apart, and when Winter came, most wrights came from those that starved to death," Sansa had said, matter factly, "Keeps wrecked, small folk scattered, unable to till the land and most traded halted. While most of the fight was south of the Neck, the North was not spared with so much of its forces down South."

Ned is looking down at the ancient plans, so old that some of the ink has faded to nothing. He looks to her plans, crisp and precise and built upon her apparent knowledge of constructing more glass gardens in Winterfell. His brows are furrowed, as Caitlyn fights the urge to say something. Ned simply looks up and stares at Sansa.

"Do you have any idea how expensive this endeavor will be?"

Pink lips flatten for a moment before Sansa's face clears into a still mask. It grew more perfected with each day, that unmoving face. Placid, easy to fall into an empty if perfect smile. The Bas- Jon, is staring at the designs with black furrowed brows, and for a moment Cat thinks she can see more clearly how much he looks like his biological father. She rarely met Prince Rhaegar in life, and cannot recall if she had ever spoken directly to him more than a polite congratulations during his wedding to Elia Martell. She had even kept her distance at the bedding ceremony, uneasy at the thought of touching that silver-haired man that was so… Beautiful. But from her brief acquaintance, she remembers a withdrawn, quiet man with constant sorrow shadowing him. And she can see him in this boy, in the serious, quiet way he held himself so tightly, warily, and she wonders with more than a little remorse if that wariness is her own doing.

"Oh, very. But that is just one thing that must be done. It is a priority," blue eyes flicker up, "The North is fertile, but has little time during its natural growing season, even during Summer. Our reliance on Southern crops is an issue. We cut off that reliance, the more the North can become more independent if the South falls to War again. If we can install a glass garden in every Keep-"

"Sansa, that is not feasible, nor are many willing to invest-"

Blue eyes gleam.

"Than we give them a reason too. It's only one thing for now, but it is an important start. We remind them of our words, of the fact that the Summer has nearly been a decade at this point. Winter is always sure to follow fiercely in response. If King Jon and I could get the North to achieve this during the Southern War and during the winds of winter, in peacetime at the height of this summer, we can do the same. We must be smart- such a thing will cause alarm to those who export to us. The Reach and the Riverlands will not a cut of their profits without good reason or a substitute of income."

Cat is often more stunned at the way that Sansa carries herself nowadays than her tales of the dark future.

Now, the seemingly young girl blinks, and Cat fights the urge to fidget beneath her daughter's eyes. Which makes her feel ridiculous. The stillness and compartment of a woman of twenty in the body of one of ten, as Sansa claimed, was entirely unsettling, regardless if it was true or not. It gave the girl an air of eeriness that even Catelyn as her own mother couldn't deny. To have it directed to you unsettled one deeply, especially if the remembered the cheerful, lovely summer child who had once worn that face. The question of where her daughter's affection lead in light of Jon's identity and role in her life has plagued Cat for weeks, still, moons later.

Even as Sansa slowly spun her tale of terror and loss and they all made careful, well-thought-out plans for what was to come in only three years. And the years after. They spent weeks furiously plotting(Cat had no other word for it), furiously thinking of the best way to prepare without shaking the realm into unsteady suspicion. Glass gardens, dragon glass, Arms, food storage, expansion of the Keep for the coming Winter, filling the ranks of both armies and the Night's Watch, trying to some extent to police the political situation down South, dragons. The events, that Sansa had told them broadly more or less affirmed that the realm was insanely unstable if the death of three men could potentially destabilize it so much.

Somewhere, in her heart's of heart's, Cat did not believe that Lysa could murder her husband. That Petyr, little Petyr could pit her husband's House, her House, against the Lannisters. That he had, and still lusted for her in the unhealthy way as Sansa had described. For she remembers Family, Duty & Honor and part of her will always think that Lysa and Petyr must as well. But Cat stands by her husband first and foremost, and her children and she will, while not completely believe, follow. She is waiting, the words of her husband's house, now truly her's, rang true enough, and while the madness of her own daughter murdering herself and her sister in a blaze of wildfire and waking back in time still made her doubt… Catelyn could not deny her second words.

Winter was coming.

And the Starks would not fall to its white winds.

Her daughter laughs, slightly, a soft thing of genuine mirth that is much rarer for Cat to hear, and it nearly breaks her heart.

"Answer me honestly, sweetling… I have no judgment for your feelings over your cousin-"

"Mother," says Sansa, a voice, firm and unyielding odd in that of a child ten name days, "I… I could have loved my King, perhaps, as a man, but he was my brother first, and I relished that in him when we found each other again."

"But there was a chance? The way you speak of him as if he hung the stars and the moon-"

A shadow falls across summer skies in her daughter's eyes.

"I have never felt romantic love, mother. Never in my life. I thought, perhaps… My original betrothed, I thought I loved him in the beginning. But I only loved the image of a golden, gilded King and golden perfect babes. Never the boy. "

Unease comes to Cat at the thought of the bastard of incest living as Prince of the Seven Kingdoms. She, again, knows not if it is true but Sansa believes, and more importantly, Ned believes, he who ignores signs from the gods, he who was so practical and unshaken by omens and so, Cat will follow. Family, Duty, Honor. Perhaps it's those omens that she so trusted that made her more eager to follow her daughter's words, to heed them however skeptical of their truth.

For her babe is gone from in ways she had never wanted, that is the only truth she knows in the face of everything, regardless of the merit of the future she predicted would happen if they did nothing.

"I-"

"I… I had some chances, I think, of what could have grown to true love. Father, just before we were to flee, he told me he wanted someone who is brave and gentle and strong to marry me and Arya when the time came. Which King Joffrey was not. I had only wished I had listened to him when I could."

Cat watches her daughter… And wonders.

"Chances?"

Another faint, distant smile.

"A… Warrior in the King's employee tried to do me a gentle act, in educating me. Tried to open my eyes when I so soundly wished to close them in the face of my situation… My first husband was strong, in sparing me the marriage bed unless I wished to join him, despite… My status as a hostage. He was unstoppable, so determined against the world despite how much it was set to hate him. And Jon was brave, unyielding in command of the world fallen to madness."

Three men, two unnamed, which is something that Cat does not miss in her daughter's speech.

"But.. I was broken, long before I had a chance to find love... Into little pieces. The High King put me back together, but it was not a romantic gesture. I was his sister. Even when he had no reason to call me such after the indifference I have given him all our lives."

Cat started, heart aching.

"Don't blame yourself, mother. I… Was too harsh with you, a few moons ago. When I told you of myself. You believed in people you loved when you were young. You had no reason to mistrust them… No matter what the outcome was."

Sansa sighs, a weighted thing before she returns to her work. Cat stares at her daughter before she does the same. Ned comes to them after many moments of practical silence, beyond the scratching of the quill across their parchment. His face is drawn tight and his hands are nervously on his belt, a nervous habit few noticed.

Sansa stands, immediately, as does Cat.

It is hard to look at him, even if there was no doubt to Cat that she loved him. For a lie of three and ten years is still a lie of three and ten years. She forgives it, to some extent, in wake of their circumstances, for they had been but strangers when he had returned from the Tower of Joy with the bones of his sister and her babe, but she doesn't think she cannot forget. Lyanna was not Ned's long-lost lady love, but a woman has still haunted their marriage for the lies she had made necessary. Ned had never placed true trust in her and it hurt her more than she could stay, even if the words of her father's house-made her understand him. Family, Duty, Honor. But she had become family as well and the lies were a price she did not know she could pay.

"The rest of the replies of the Lords of the North have come."

Sansa does not move, even as Cat strides forward, hands trembling. Automatically she reaches for her husband before she lets her hands drop.

"And?"

Ned frowns, face grim as his hands tighten their grip on their belt.

"They come, all of the North's houses, big or small are coming within the next fortnight. The Lords of the North shall gather at Winterfell to discuss the issue of the coming Winter. A council of the all the North for the first time since the Ironborn."

Sansa smiles a small, pretty thing that does not meet her eyes.

"Any news back from the Citadel?" she asks, calmly moving over to the small table to the right of the solar, pouring wine in her father's cup and offering it to him.

Ned takes it but does not drink. He simply holds the drink. Stares into the wine.

"None, yet, but soon. I believe your projections will come back confirmed from their first few letters. All of Westeros will see that Winter is Coming… A long one."

Sharp blue eyes gleam.

"And King's Landing?"

Something tightens in Ned's face. He looks away from the wine, even as he places the cup down delicately.

"No word from the King. The Hand, however, has given credence to our worry and tells us that we have the full support of the Crown once the Citadel confirms everything. No one can accuse us of instruction."

"Good. They will anyway, but they will be reluctant to act with the words of the King. I must take my revised plans of the glasshouses to Maester Luwin and our new resident glassblower, if you are to excuse me, I will only be a moment, Mother, Father."

Sansa leaves the room in a flurry of dark skirts and after a most elegant curtsy. Catelyn admires her form just as much as she is annoyed by her leaving her alone with Ned. She had taken residence in the rooms of the Lady of the House, unused for the majority of their long marriage, and had little reason to be alone with her husband for moons with Sansa and Jon constantly at their heels…

"My lady?" his voice is soft, deep and after years of marriage, achingly comforting.

She sighs.

"Ned."

Grey eyes look to her, sorrowful and something pulls in her chest.

"Will you… Will you still stay by my side, Cat? I need you."

Ned is a man of few words- to say such things must have been a struggle. Her lower lip trembles, but she refuses tears. A lady does not fall apart.

"Yes. I am duty-bound."

"I ask not for duty."

She looks at him, her husband, who has never betrayed her with another woman but instead hidden something that would kill them all instead. She is not sure if she preferred Jon Snow to be a bastard instead of a princeling of a fallen dynasty. Resentment does not heal in face of the truth and sometimes when she sees Jon she is still angry, still frustrated. Still hateful in ways she knew not possible of herself- she was a proud woman but she had always thought herself to be undeniably kind. Jon Snow had shown her the worst parts of her and Cat did not like them. To know that her anger and hurt were misplaced did not reveal her of them, the lie only made her hurt more.

"I know."

"I only meant to protect you and the children, if the worst came to be."

Cat looks away and sighs.

"I know."

"Can you not… Find it in yourself to forgive me?"

She loves him. She has been in love with Eddard Stark for so long, so many years spent together in spite of their happenstance of marriage, and sometimes in her darkest, yet happiest moments she is so glad that she married him instead of Brandon. She sighs and lets the tears fall as she strides forward. Her forehead against his. He is kind, gentle, and strong. What they both want for their children, it seems. He is not what she had wanted, since girlhood, but better.

More.

"I already have," the words are true and gently said. Even as her hurt and rejection threaten to consume her, "But I need time, my love."

Ned says nothing, only kisses the tears on her cheeks as they fall, every single last one. As always his actions speak more than his words.

EDIT: 28 May 2021

I am so sorry there has been a delay in this chapter. I weirdly have been updating this story steadily every week for the first five chapters, which isn't like me at all. I tend to be a slow updater and sometimes months can go by before I update. This chapter was more or less done two weeks ago, but I'm out of town doing an internship at a summer art camp and have been insanely busy because of it. Sorry for the delay.

~Happy Reading,

Moon Witch '96

Next Chapter: Earth, Sansa's POV.